Rambler 171

Number 171
Tuesday, November 5, 1751

[Misella’s description of the life of a prostitute.]

Tædet cœli convexa tueri.
— Virg.

Dark is the sun, and loathsome is the day.

To the Rambler.

Sir,

Misella now sits down to continue her narrative. I am convinced that nothing would more powerfully preserve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience from seduction, than a just description of the condition into which the wanton° plunges herself, and therefore hope that my letter may be a sufficient antidote to my example.

After the distraction, hesitation and delays which the timidity of guilt naturally produces, I was removed to lodgings in a distant part of the town under one of the characters commonly assumed upon such occasions. Here being by my circumstances condemned to solitude, I passed most of my hours in bitterness and anguish. The conversation of the people with whom I was placed, was not at all capable of engaging my attention or dispossessing° the reigning ideas. The books which I carried to my retreat were such as heightened my abhorrence of myself; for I was not so far abandoned as to sink voluntarily into corruption, or endeavour to conceal from my own mind the enormity° of my crime.

My relation remitted° none of his fondness, but visited me so often that I was sometimes afraid lest his assiduity° should expose him to suspicion. Whenever he came he found me weeping, and was therefore less delightfully entertained than he expected. After frequent expostulations° upon the unreasonableness of my sorrow, and innumerable protestations of everlasting regard, he at last found that I was more affected with the loss of my innocence, than the danger of my fame, and that he might not be disturbed by my remorse, began to lull my conscience with the opiates° of irreligion. His arguments were such as my course of life has since exposed me often to the necessity of hearing, vulgar,° empty and fallacious; yet they at first confounded° me by their novelty, filled me with doubt and perplexity, and interrupted that peace which I began to feel from the sincerity of my repentance without substituting any other support. I listened a while to his impious gabble, but its influence was soon over-powered by natural reason and early education, and the convictions which this new attempt gave me of his baseness compleated my abhorrence. I have heard of barbarians, who, when tempests drive ships upon their coast, decoy them to the rocks that they may plunder their lading,° and have always thought that wretches thus merciless in their depredations,° ought to be destroyed by a general insurrection of all social beings; yet how light is this guilt to the crime of him, who in the agitations of remorse cuts away the anchor of piety, and when he has drawn aside credulity° from the paths of virtue, hides the light of heaven which would direct her to return. I had hitherto° considered him as a man equally betrayed with myself by the concurrence of appetite and opportunity; but I now saw with horror that he was contriving to perpetuate his gratification, and was desirous to fit me to his purpose by complete and radical° corruption.

To escape however, was not yet in my power. I could support the expences of my condition,° only by the continuance of his favour. He provided all that was necessary, and in a few weeks, congratulated me upon my escape from the danger which we had both expected with so much anxiety. I then began to remind him of his promise to restore me with my fame° uninjured to the world. He promised me in general terms, that nothing should be wanting° which his power could add to my happiness, but forbore to release me from my confinement. I knew how much my reception in the world depended upon my speedy return, and was therefore outragiously impatient of his delays, which I now perceived to be only artifices° of lewdness.° He told me at last, with an appearance of sorrow, that all hopes of restoration to my former state were for ever precluded;° that chance had discovered° my secret and malice divulged it, and that nothing now remained, but to seek a retreat more private, where curiosity or hatred could never find us.

The rage, anguish, and resentment, which I felt at this account, are not to be expressed. I was in so much dread of reproach and infamy,° which he represented as pursuing me with full cry, that I yielded myself implicitly to his disposal, and was removed with a thousand studied precautions through by-ways and dark passages, to another house, where I harrassed him with perpetual solicitations° for a small annuity,° that might enable me to live in the country with obscurity and innocence.

This demand he at first evaded with ardent professions,° but in time appeared offended at my importunity and distrust; and having one day endeavoured to sooth me with uncommon expressions of tenderness, when he sound my discontent immoveable, left me with some inarticulate murmurs of anger. I was pleased that he was at last roused to sensibility,° and expecting that at his next visit, he would comply with my request, lived with great tranquillity upon the money in my hands, and was so much pleased with this pause of persecution, that I did not reflect how much his absence had exceeded the usual intervals, till I was alarmed with the danger of wanting° subsistence. I then suddenly contracted my expences, but was unwilling to supplicate° for assistance. Necessity, however, soon overcame my modesty or my pride, and I applied to him by a letter, but had no answer. I writ in terms more pressing, but without effect. I then sent an agent to enquire after him, who informed me, that he had quitted° his house, and was gone with his family to reside for some time upon his estate in Ireland.

However shocked at this abrupt departure, I was yet° unwilling to believe that he could wholly abandon me, and therefore by the sale of my cloaths I supported myself, expecting that every post would bring me relief. Thus I passed seven months between hope and dejection, in a gradual approach to poverty and distress, emaciated° with discontent and bewildered with uncertainty. At last, my landlady, after many hints of the necessity of a new lover, took the opportunity of my absence to search my boxes, and missing some of my apparel, seized the remainder for rent, and led me to the door.

To remonstrate° against legal cruelty, was vain; to supplicate° obdurate° brutality, was hopeless. I went away I knew not whither, and wandered about without any settled purpose, unacquainted with the usual expedients° of misery, unqualified for laborious offices, afraid to meet an eye that had seen me before, and hopeless of relief from those who were strangers to my former condition. Night came on in the midst of my distraction, and I still continued to wander till the menaces of the watch° obliged me to shelter my self in a covered passage.

Next day, I procured a lodging in the backward garret° of a mean° house, and employed my landlady to enquire for a service. My applications were generally rejected for want° of a character.° At length, I was received at a draper’s;° but when it was known to my mistress that I had only one gown, and that of silk, she was of opinion, that I looked like a thief, and without warning, hurried me away. I then tried to support myself by my needle, and by my landlady’s recommendation, obtained a little work from a shop, and for three weeks lived without repining;° but when my punctuality had gained me so much reputation, that I was trusted to make up a head of some value, one of my fellow lodgers stole the lace, and I was obliged to fly from a prosecution.

Thus driven again into the streets, I lived upon the least that could support me, and at night accommodated myself under penthouses° as well as I could. At length I became absolutely pennyless; and having strolled all day without sustenance,° was at the close of evening accosted by an elderly man, with an invitation to a tavern. I refused him with hesitation; he seized me by the hand, and drew me into a neighbouring house, where when he saw my face pale with hunger, and my eyes swelling with tears, he spurned me from him, and bad me cant° and whine in some other place; he for his part would take care of his pockets.

I still continued to stand in the way, having scarcely strength to walk farther, when another soon addressed me in the same manner. When he saw the same tokens° of calamity,° he considered that I might be obtained at a cheap rate, and therefore quickly made overtures,° which I had no longer firmness to reject. By this man I was maintained four months in penurious° wickedness, and then abandoned to my former condition from which I was delivered by another keeper.

In this abject° state I have now passed four years, the drudge of extortion and the sport of drunkenness; sometimes the property of one man, and sometimes the common prey of accidental° lewdness; at one time tricked up for sale by the mistress of a brothel, at another begging in the streets to be relieved from hunger by wickedness; without any hope in the day but of finding some whom folly or excess may expose to my allurements, and without any reflections° at night, but such as guilt and terror impress upon me.

If those who pass their days in plenty and security, could visit for an hour the dismal receptacles to which the prostitute retires from her nocturnal excursions, and see the wretches that lie crowded together, mad with intemperance, ghastly with famine, nauseous° with filth, and noisome° with disease; it would not be easy for any degree of abhorrence to harden them against compassion, or to repress the desire which they must immediately feel to rescue such numbers of human beings from a state so dreadful.

It is said that in France they annually evacuate their streets, and ship their prostitutes and vagabonds° to their colonies. If the women that infest this city had the same opportunity of escaping from their miseries, I believe very little force would be necessary; for who among them can dread any change? Many of us indeed are wholly unqualified for any but the most servile employments, and those perhaps would require the care of a magistrate to hinder them from following the same practices in another country; but others are only precluded° by infamy° from reformation, and would gladly be delivered on any terms from the necessity of guilt and the tyranny of chance. No place but a populous city can afford opportunities for open prostitution, and where the eye of justice can attend to individuals, those who cannot be made good may be restrained from mischief. For my part I should exult at the privilege of banishment, and think myself happy in any region that should restore me once again to honesty and peace.

I am, Sir, &c.
Misella.